Pixies

[daniel.santos]

I've been playing around with a few things, but I didn't know about these forums until recently, so I've just been submitting patches to http://trac.rephial.org. So I did a whole patch set to introduce (full) Trolls as a playable race, and I'm pretty happy with that one at this point (http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/1693), but my current project is a playable Pixie race. I guess the Trolls were huge, stupid and loaded with liabilities (crappy saves, search, ranged attack, disarm and super crappy stealth) all offset their massive str, con and a hitdie of 14, so I wanted to counter balance that with a race that's incredibly fragile (hitdie of 4) and I would really love some feedback and opinions.

So my latest patch set is here. Here's the summary:

  a) Female   a) Human       Str:  -6  Dex:  +9
  b) Male     b) Half-Elf    Int:  +4  Con:  -4
  c) Neuter   c) Elf         Wis:  +4  Chr:  +6
              d) Hobbit
              e) Gnome       Hit/Shoot/Throw: -20/+10/+10
              f) Dwarf       Hit die:  4   XP mod: 110%
              g) Half-Orc    Disarm: +20   Devices:  +7
              h) Half-Troll  Save:   +15   Stealth:  +7
              i) Dunadan     Infravision:  30 ft
              j) High-Elf    Digging:      -1
              k) Kobold      Search:       +8/12
              l) Troll
              m) Pixie       No falling damage
                             Gains speed bonus
                             Spells fail less and sometimes use less mana

This is the actual p_race.txt entry (at current)

N:12:Pixie
S:-6:4:4:9:-4:6
R:20:7:15:7:8:12:-20:10:10:-1
X:4:110:3
I:30:10:4
H:21:2:20:2
W:12:1:12:1
F:FEATHER
Y:FAST | MAGICAL
C:0|1|3|4

So with -6 strength, the haste bonus is pretty critical early on due to encumbrance, but it also seems to fit the lore. This is the breakdown on how I've implemented that:

Level  Speed Bonus
1      +1
13     +2
25     +3
38     +4
50     +5

I added the magical bonus to try to give some pay-off for playing such a fragile race, but it also fits with the lore. So first off, the chance for spell failure is reduced to 2/3, prior to the 50% cap. So some spells that when first learned would have a 50% fail rate, wont necessarily be converted to 33% -- it depends upon the difficulty of the spell prior to that cap. This reduction is also prior to all penalties (stunning, amnesia, etc.), so it doesn't reduce those penalties.

Next is the chance that casting a spell will use less manna. This is a bit more complex and the part I tweaked the most trying to find what felt right. So currently, the chance is now 10%-50% (based upon level), minus the spell's failure chance. The formula is:

10 + (level - 1) * 40 / 49 - fail_chance

When a spell is successfully cast "with ease", the manna cost of the spell is reduced to rand_range(fail_chance, 75) percent. This means that difficult spells are less likely to be "cast with ease" and even if they are, the manna savings potential is reduced. In summary, here is the average manna reduction for casting a spell with a 3% fail rate (not accounting for manna saved by failing less):

Level  Avg Savings
1       4.27%
10      8.54%
20     13.42%
30     18.30%
40     23.18%
50     28.67%

You can also think of this as a bonus to max manna and manna regen rate that increases (in percentage) as you level, but is rendered more interesting because of its random nature. But perhaps more importantly, it is unevenly distributed, lending its self to success on easier spells and not so much to more difficult spells.

I've written a basic history for them, but it's far from refined. They would still need some avatars. (I have a temp hack that gives them the elven look for now, but I didn't submit that).